From a Certain Angle
by ncfan
Summary: -Yondaime Kazekage, Temari- Too much like her.


**Characters**: Kazekage, Temari**  
Summary**: Too much like her.**  
Pairings**: None**  
Author's Note**: Takeo is my name for the Yondaime Kazekage. I realize that in the past, I haven't really treated the Yondaime all that well; it's kind of hard to portray him sympathetically, considering his rap sheet, and the fact that I don't really like him doesn't help. However, I have tried to be a little more fair here.**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own Naruto.

* * *

It came as a bit of a shock the first time he noticed, even though he had always seen and acknowledged it before; he didn't not really _see_, though, until now. The sight confronting his eyes was astounding, disconcerting, unsettling. Utterly unacceptable, except Takeo knew he would have to accept it. The truth could not be altered to fit his views.

Takeo didn't really start to open his eyes until the day Takeo first saw Temari wear the old fan on her back, the scratched but strong dark iron gleaming in the desert sun—his eyes were forced open, in fact. She was only twelve years old and, like the iron tessen's previous owner buckled a little under its weight at the first time wearing it, but Temari had the advantage of being two years older than the previous bearer had been, and that she was taller and stronger than nearly every other girl in her age group.

"Kami-sama, this thing is heavy," Takeo heard her grumble, as she shifted the fan on her shoulders, attempting and failing to find a place where it would be comfortable.

"You should consider yourself lucky," Takeo said sternly, stepping out from the shadows of the loggia and into the deserted, sandy courtyard—it was nearly evening, the skies painted carmine red at the horizon, and any able genin would be heading towards the dunes. Any practice in ninjutsu and taijutsu in Sunagakure was held outside the city limits after dark, so as to avoid the worst of the heat and any heat-related injuries.

The girl's normally proud face, beautiful in a terrible, desert-kunoichi sort of way, flushed scarlet at the crest of high, broad cheekbones, as Temari bowed her head deferentially—and maybe a little fearfully, Takeo speculated. "Otousama."

Takeo walked forward until he stood directly in front of her—even though she was tall for her age, Takeo still towered over his daughter. Her dark purple knee-length yukata—linen, unlike the wool worn by the lower classes—seemed almost black in the light, a contrast to the white robes he wore over his civilian clothes. Temari met her father's gaze squarely, with a somewhat false bravado in her deep emerald eyes.

"This fan has had a jutsu placed on it that keeps the iron from heating in the sun. The owners of the Tessen no Ryuu and the Tessen no Sakura—" the only other iron war fans in Suna; there had only ever been three "—are not so fortunate, as the jutsu itself has been lost."

Temari nodded mutely.

He raised an eyebrow, noting something. "You have returned from your tutoring with Hiryuu Ryoko-san?" Ryoko, the wielder of the Tessen no Ryuu, was the one who trained—as best she could; the two fans had different capabilities—Temari in wielding her fan.

"Yes, sir?"

"And your brothers? Where are they?"

Temari seemed a little uncomfortable at this. "Kankuro probably hasn't gotten done with today's puppetry lessons with Chiyo-sama. As for Gaara—" Takeo could catch the coppery flavor of fear on her voice, just to mention her youngest sibling's name "—Gaara is wherever he goes during the day. I don't look for him."

No, no one bothered looking for the tiny nine-year-old boy who could have destroyed an army if he wanted to by drowning them in sand. Gaara didn't need looking after.

Takeo nodded. "Then go on to your sensei, and wait for your brothers with him. If Gaara does not come by moonrise, then you will simply have to do tonight's lesson without him."

"Hai, Otousama." Temari tried to drop her torso in a bow, but the weight of the fan on her back threw her off balance and she stumbled, and would have fallen had Takeo not caught her by the crooks of her elbows and righted her.

"And don't bow when you have that fan on your back. A simple nod of the head will do."

If he was honest, Takeo would admit that Temari was his favorite child, despite being a daughter. She was the only one of the lot who showed any initiative outside of the battlefield, his proud, ambitious girl. Gaara was put to better use as a weapon than a child or a son, and Kankuro would be a fine puppet master but never any more than that. Temari was the only one who didn't disappoint him in some way.

Takeo would have been happiest with three sons, but daughters had their uses too. Temari would be a powerful kunoichi, but her true use would be to be married to another kage or a kage's relative when the time came, to cement an alliance, to bind another village to Sunagakure, irrevocably.

And Temari, Temari was shaping out to be very like her mother.

Takeo, a pragmatic man, could of course see the differences that made them dissimilar. Temari's hair was coarser, her frame more full-bodied; Karura's green eyes had contained gray flecks within them, her bone structure more delicate. And if Takeo had been even more pragmatic, he would have seen that perhaps Temari was not the true inheritor of her mother's spirit, that Gaara was more his mother's child than Temari or Kankuro ever would be.

But Takeo's pragmatism only took him so far, and when looking for Karura in the living his eyes stopped at Temari.

His only daughter, the child he had not at first truly wanted.

The bearer of the fan that had once been Karura's, sure to wield it with as much skill and ferocity.

Marriage pawn, kunoichi, Kazekage's daughter, desert princess.

And the way Takeo knew Karura was ready to haunt him, spite him from the grave.


End file.
